*Many* thanks to everyone (19 people) who responded to my question about
resource authority files. I do want to clarify one point: here at the
Unversity of Chicago we have been doing NACO work on OCLC for several years,
and having this file would not change our adherence to established
procedures or our use of the NACO macro features in any way; a couple of
people seemed to think that we were planning to do all our work against the
proposed resource file, so that our work would be out of date before it was
input! We are happy with OCLC as our vehicle for NACO, with the exception
of searching.
Our interest is in making our searching as efficient as possible, so we can
minimize the risk of duplicating authorities; also, our ILS, Horizon
(4.2v3), processes authorities and the headings on bibliographic records in
such a way that it is often necessary to consult the pristine LC authority
file to understand changes that have been automatically applied, and we do
not find any of the ways that are currently available to us to do this to be
very efficient compared to a local resource file. As we are doing
large-scale recon, the volume of incoming headings that need to be reviewed
may be up to several hundred in a day, of which some portion would have to
be checked in the LC authority file.
I have to say that the responses, though much appreciated, reveal no
surprising information. Many libraries are living with OCLC and
supplementing with LOCIS or RLIN. Only one respondent specifically
supported the need for keyword searching from OCLC. A couple of libraries
reported using OCLC satisfactorily without a backup approach. One library
uses LOCIS and RLIN. Two libraries use RLIN, OCLC or LOCIS, and a local
resource file all together. If anyone wants more information, let me know.
Thank you all very much for your input!
Jane
Jane Ciacci
Head, Cataloging Department
The University of Chicago Library
1100 East 57th St., Rm. 172
Chicago, IL 60637
tel: (773)702-8739
fax: (773)702-6623
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